April 12, 2012
Voxware Explains Decision to Ready its Voice Picking Management Application for Android
By Tracey E. Schelmetic
TMCnet Contributor
While speech technology has revolutionized many areas, certain applications – hosted IVR, or interactive voice response – tend to grab the lions' share of attention. Voice technology, however, has found a home in many industries, including the warehousing industry, which uses something called “voice picking,” or voice-directed warehouse technology. Using it, warehouse workers wear a headset and a small wireless device that guides them to the right location and the right task using verbal prompts.
B-to-B speech technology solutions company Voxware (News - Alert), which specializes in voice picking, recently took a curious step with its technology. According to a blog post by Stephen Gerrard, the company's Vice President of Marketing & Strategic Planning, the company is working hard to maintain a reputation as a forward-thinking organization, which is why it has embarked on taking advantage of some advancements in mobile computing from the consumer sector.
“Although unconventional, it appears that the consumer market for phones and personal devices could become an incubator for technology that can then transition into the supply chain world,” said Gerrard.
What are these business-to-consumer technologies that can help grow advancement in the supply chain world? Voxware recently announced that it has become the first independent voice software company serving the supply chain market to provide support for Google’s (News - Alert) Android operation system.
Though it may seem a little odd, for a speech technology company that serves a b-to-b niche to work with a consumer product like Android (News - Alert), Gerrard says it's all about mobile management.
“We’ve talked to companies who are looking towards the consumer mobile computing world for inspiration as mobility becomes more important – not just for workers, but for managers, too,” said Gerrard. “‘Mobile management’ is an up and coming concept that will free managers from staying at stationary points, allowing them to move within the DC without losing access to the functionality they need to manage the operation. Managers can have their eyes on the floor and still have the capacity for action at their fingertips,” he said.
Voxware says it's less about mobile phones and more about tablet computers. With its voice picking management application now engineered to work on a wide array of tablets, customers can now enable their supervisors to walk the floor while reviewing real time graphs, alerts, and activating executable options to change parts of the work flow. Instead of waiting for technology to catch up with business ideas, warehouses can leverage new capability towards greater efficiency.
“Warehouses may not have been the first place that iPads and Android devices were intended for,” writes Gerrard. “But in technology, you cannot restrict your inspiration to the same preconceived channels of development. We know innovation can come from anywhere, and we want to prepare now for the time when Android and tablets are going to play a bigger and bigger role in warehousing,” he said.
Edited by Juliana Kenny